Peter Hamilton - Fallen Fragon

"No, sir."

"Communication with wheel two lost," Colin reported.

"Turn off your spacesuit communications," Marquis ordered. "Don't let it get inside." He glanced at the camera pictures. Vigorous geysers of atmosphere were spraying out of wheel two. It was like watching a friend bleed to death.

Weary sadness replaced the anger that had carried him this far.

"Abandon ship."

"Sir?" Colin Jeffries said.

The remaining bridge crew were staring at him.

"There's nothing else we can do. And I'm not leaving any of my people hostage to these bastards. Use the lifeboats, get clear. The spaceplanes will pick you up."

"What about you?"

"The captain stays with his ship. You know that!"

"Then I'm staying as well."

"Colin, please—" Pane displays began to fracture into random chunks of color, then went dead. The steady background whine of the environmental fans faded away. All the lights went off. Marquis snatched up the helmet and jammed it down on his collar. Shaking fingers engaged the seal. He gripped the arms on his chair just as the air turned into a howling hurricane. Paper, plastic cups, food trays, electronics, foaming water and even clothing streamed past him, caught in stop-motion flight by the blazing scarlet strobe light that was intent on warning the bridge of a decompression. A T-shirt wrapped itself around his helmet, flapping furiously. He didn't dare let go of the chair to push it off. The wild torrent would have carried him with it. He tried rocking from side to side, and eventually the fabric slipped away.

Air was pouring through an open hatchway. He could actually see moisture vapor scoring thin contrails, marking out the flow. Any unsecured item had been sucked through. When he pictured the wheel's layout he remembered there was an escape hatch three compartments along. The subversion software must have fired the explosive bolts.

It took several minutes for all the atmosphere to clear. When the gusts and roaring had shrunk away, the red decompression strobe was still flashing. It had been joined by green strobes that had come on around the lifeboat hatch that had opened in the floor. With his communication circuit off, Marquis could hear nothing. He switched on his spacesuit helmet light, then pushed out of his chair. Colin and the other crew were doing the same. He beckoned Colin over, and they touched helmets.

"Take the lifeboat," Marquis shouted. "Get these people out."

"You must come with us." Colin's voice was like a muffled buzzing.

"No. I ordered the squad to intercept that Skin. I'm going to find out what happened to them. They're my responsibility."

"Good luck, sir."

The first of the bridge crew glided into the lifeboat. Marquis Krojen left the bridge. Normally the life support wheel seemed cramped and confined; in freefall it was a lot larger. Red, amber and green strobes flashed around him as he slid through the empty, airless corridors. He passed three lifeboat hatches that were shut. Blue indicator lights showed that the little craft had ejected safely.

It killed him to see his magnificent starship in this state. Environmental ducts had ruptured during the decompression, shattering dozens of plastic panels. Thick blue-green coolant fluid dribbled out of torn tubes, creating small constellations of globules that fizzed energetically as they evaporated in the vacuum. Loose debris that hadn't been sucked out formed its own baleful nebula in each compartment and cabin. It was mainly composed of clothes and crumpled food trays, though there were also cushions, fragments of plastic paneling, chairs, mashed-up pot plants, even a pedal frame from one of the gyms. Now that the air had gone it floated idly, drifting out of open hatchways to clutter the corridor. He glided around the obstacles or flicked them aside. Water was boiling furiously out of a split pipe, filling a long section of the corridor with thick white mist.

Even if they did recover the ship, he knew Z-B would never spend the money it would require for a complete refit. His Koribu was doomed, one way or another.

The spoke lift shaft that led up to the wheel's hub was almost clear, allowing him to move a lot faster. When he reached the first hub compartment the pressure door hinged shut behind him. The strobes went off, and the normal lighting returned. Several of the panels flickered, betraying just how much damage had been wrought by the decompression; internal systems were designed to operate in a vacuum. Refusing to be intimidated by the subversion software's activity, he moved into the hub's annular corridor and continued toward the transfer toroid.

The pressure door was closed. He pushed against it, knowing how futile that gesture was. Dense white gas suddenly burst out of an environment duct grille with a silent rush.

"Jesus," he muttered inside the helmet. The software must be preparing the wheel for the invaders. He flipped around quickly and kicked off. There was one hub compartment that was safer for him than the others. He zipped back along the annular corridor. Every grille was blowing out a column of air. The booby-trapped compartment was directly ahead. Pressure was already back up to half a standard atmosphere.

"Careful. It could be dangerous in there."

Marquis gripped the hatch rim to halt his flight and slowly looked round. The Skin was floating lazily along the annular corridor behind him.

"Somebody wired up the whole place to the backup power supply," the Skin said; his voice was tinny in the thin air.

Marquis turned his communication circuit back on. "It was wired up on my orders."

"A reasonable idea for a noncombatant."

"What do you want?"

"What I have, Captain: your starship."

"Why? At least tell me that."

"We're taking it on a trip."

"I doubt it. You've succeeded in virtually wrecking it."

"This is just superficial damage to the life support sections. The drives are intact. That's all we need."

"Where are you going?"

"To the alien's home star. You're welcome to come with us if you like. You've spent your life in space. I suspect you haven't entirely lost your fascination with the unknown, even if it's been diverted by Zantiu-Braun."

The offer did cause Marquis Krojen to hesitate, but duty was a lot stronger than old dreams. "My only concern right now is for the safety of my crew. Did you kill the squad I sent up here?"

"A blunt question, Captain. But, no, they're not dead, although a couple of them are injured. We subverted their spacesuits and turned off the air. They had to take their helmets off. I darted them."

"I see."

"Well, there's gratitude. Ah. Here we go."

The lights dimmed again. Marquis realized something was diverting power from the tokamaks. "The compression drive," he said in surprise.

"I did say it was intact. We'll be using it as soon as the alien can raise the tokamaks up to full power and bring the energy inverter online. In the meantime, I want you to help me shove the remaining crewmen into lifeboats. If we don't, then they'll be coming with us, and this ship is not going to come back."

* * *

Simon had blacked out when the scramjet came on. Acceleration had heightened the pain to an unbelievable agony before his body's beleaguered natural defenses snatched him away. When he recovered he was in freefall, with the intensive-care equipment emitting urgent bleeping sounds. Indigo symbols and script slowly crept into focus. There was no data available from the Koribu. He told his AS to give him the orbital tactical plots, and the sensor readings from the star-ships and satellites. "Good God." It was every bit as bad as he expected.

"Please, don't try to move," the doctor said quickly. "You're all right."

"I'd better be," Simon snapped at him. The crisp circles of the tactical plot showed him forty-eight lifeboats were slowly receding from the Koribu. The Xiantis had rendezvoused with a few, but they didn't have the cabin space to accommodate all the crewmen sheltering inside. Two of the spaceplanes had simply loaded the lifeboats into their cargo bays and de-orbited, carrying them down to Durrell. The remainder of the lifeboats were waiting for instructions: should they remain in orbit for rendezvous and rescue, or should they fire their retro rockets and land on the planet—if so, at what location? Simon couldn't care less. He reduced the tactical display back into the main display grid and expanded the Koribu's sensor scans. Vast and powerful magnetic flux lines were expanding out from the compression drive section as the tokamaks powered up. The starship was preparing to go FTL.